


surprise!

by veterani



Series: atomic [3]
Category: IT (2017), IT (Movie) - Fandom, IT (Movies- Musichetti), IT- Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fix-It, I got sad when I wrote the first one so wrote myself happy, M/M, Post-Movie, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Somehow this is becoming a series, Spoilers, character focused, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-24 09:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20703737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterani/pseuds/veterani
Summary: richie flops. eddie resurfaces.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> oh no, this is a series now. but i'm having fun. hopefully this can still be read individually?

Richie’s problem has always been that he talks too much.

‘Yadda fucking yadda all day long, y’know, to the extent where people would start talking more just to shut me up, so there was this random scrum of people just chatting shit and in the middle I’m going: isn’t this meant to be church?’

A couple of polite guffaws, but mainly just silence. Richie starts talking again to fill the void.

‘Okay, not my best gag. Hey, d’you hear the one about the bombing comedian?’

The man in the booth at the back of the club makes a cutting motion across his neck. Richie sighs.

‘Well, kids, that’s all I’ve got time for. I've been Richie Tozier, apparently. See you next time!’

A smattering of applause. Richie slinks off the stage and sits down with his head in his hands backstage. What a colossal dick chop. It’s been ages since he bombed like that. God, the last time he bombed was after Mike called- something that he hasn’t yet recovered from, by the way. His agent gets fewer calls; people express sympathy but there’s a taint around him now. Unreliable.

Fucking ridiculous. If they knew- if they knew they wouldn’t be able to cope. You’d be fucking unreliable if you got drenched in your best friend’s blood as he died. Un-fucking-reliable. Jesus.

No one comes to tell him he did a good show. The next guy up gets them guffawing and Richie knows he’s sunk, at least for the moment. Is it the material? He’s definitely said worse stuff. But that stuff was written by tried and tested hacks. Richie is trying not to be a hack anymore.

He drives home. He doesn’t even have a driver anymore- he doesn’t want one, he’s not a twat, but it was nice to know the option was there. Before. Home is empty, drafty and dirty, he hasn’t bothered to clean in weeks. He grabs a tumbler and glass off the shelf and pours a big, dark brandy. No mixer. Just drinks it down in one long gulp and tries to pause before he has another.

He lists all the reasons for not drinking too much, not smoking too much, not crying too much, in a voice that’s full of fear and bravery all in one.

God, the second he forgets that voice, he’s not sure he wants to live.

His eyes flick to the frame on the window. It’s a picture they took desperately in those last few days of the whole Club together. Ben and Bev look happy and inevitable. Mike smiles warmly. Bill looks tense and nervous but good, in his own way. Richie has his arm slung around Eddie and Eddie is as warm as the sun and if Richie closes his eyes and really focuses, he can remember how Eddie felt under the skin of his forearm. Warm and real, radiating through thirty years. He remembers feeling like he was holding an ice cream again next to his best friend and beating his score on Street Fighter and all those moments where there wasn’t Pennywise and everything felt good. Just good. Nothing alongside, nothing ready to pop out from somewhere unknown. Just a bunch of friends hanging out in a shitty town during summer.

He can’t bear to remember it, knowing what happened next. It takes enough out of him to check the Losers’ group chat every once in a while. There’s only five names in there. The absences rankle and congeal behind every message that’s sent. He can speak to them individually- him and Bev have a streak of awful knock-knock jokes going- but as a group, it’s inescapable.

He pours another brandy and steps onto the balcony.

Where, standing shivering and scared as fuck, is Eddie fucking Kaspbrak.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eddie's pov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops, this became a series within a series. lol. anyway i watched it 2 again today and cried.

Eddie isn’t entirely sure how he got here. He remembers leaving the sewers, walking along and finding no exit, and feeling a tightness in his chest. He was sure there was more to getting out of these tunnels, but hey. He’ll take what he can get.

Now, forgive him if he’s wrong, but Eddie’s always thought that you needed to breathe in order to not be able to in times of crisis. Well, turns out he was wrong, and Eddie’s deep, deep fucking physiological problems are continuing after death. He wants his inhaler, even though he doesn’t need it.

The sewer walls are incredibly slimy, and seem grimmer than when Eddie came in here last with the others. Truth be told, he’s come to the conclusion that something must’ve happened because where there used to be light there’s darkness, and everything feels pitch black in a very unsavoury way. He does vaguely remember the sound of something collapsing above him. Then it hits.

Neibolt must be gone, mustn’t it? That would explain a lot of things. If it collapsed in on itself- well, no wonder they left. Eddie isn’t sure about much, is very nervous and reflective most of the time, but he’s pretty sure that they (Richie) wouldn’t leave him like this. Alone. In the dark. With It.

He keeps praying it’s not following him and looking back for a leper, even now.

The darkness starts to close in on him as his unbeating heart clenches.

‘Shit,’ he groans, breath short as fuck, ‘shouldn’t have left my body, should not have left my fucking body,’

Is it too late to go back for it?

The sewer leans up like a maw and swallows him whole.

-

And this time, he really thought that was it. People don’t come back from the dead twice, do they? Do ghosts even have corpses?

But here he is, jolted back into himself, in the middle of a park. He can tell it’s a park because his face is directly opposite one of those twee ‘no walking on the grass’ signs and normally Eddie would hop off that grass before whatever was on it got on him- pesticides, masses of pesticides- but he’s too tired and in shock and bleary from waking up from death for the second time in two days.

For a second he wonders if he’s naked. Then he decides he doesn’t care. He’s probably a ghost anyway, he thinks hysterically, what would it matter if he was naked? Who could fucking see him?

He’s not, though. He’s still wearing the same ratty hoodie and t-shirt as before, except he can feel cold air on his skin because a massive fucking hole was ripped into the centre of it.

Whereupon he realises he can feel cold air.

Sensations. Senses equal life equal Eddie is alive again and isn’t that a turn up for the books? Like an electric shock he leaps off the ground and punches the air with a ‘Whoop!’ straight out of the Breakfast Club. He can hear the whoop, hear it ringing from his lungs and the breath he takes to do it again.

Somehow, he’s alive and properly this time, thank God, thank God, thank God. A small child eating an ice cream is staring at him from a bench. Staring at him. She starts to laugh. He laughs back. It’s a crisp Tuesday morning and Eddie Kaspbrak is alive.

He runs over to the kid. It just stares up at him with a dumb, ice-cream haze expression.

‘Excuse me,’ he asks, polite with strangers to a fault, ‘where am I?’

The kid blinks blankly at him. Jesus, Eddie thinks, thank fuck Richie isn’t here or it’d run away screaming.

Richie. He’s alive now, which means that he can find Richie. But Richie thinks he’s dead. A slight issue. Bit of a risk. Richie is not likely to believe that Eddie is alive, because who would, Eddie’s not stupid. But he has to find him, if he has to go find anyone.

‘LA,’ the kid says in a tiny voice. It’s kind of cute, if it didn’t shake him to the core.

Whatever cosmic force brought Eddie back brought him to Richie, a scale of matchmaking that makes Eddie kind of want to retch. What’s controlling their lives, their deaths? Why did it kill Stan and bring him back? Eddie doesn’t believe in fate but he hasn’t got much choice now, has he. He’s a living embodiment of it.

‘Thanks,’ he says. And scarpers. Looking desperately for street signs. Fuck, if only his phone wasn’t in- he checks his pockets. There it is. Fucking dreamy. The deity looking out for him is clearly a God with a capital G because he’s not only given Eddie his phone back, but upgraded it to the phone Myra wouldn’t let him have with blanket fucking signal.

Richie told him his address, didn’t he? That night at the Chinese, before everything went under. With a drunken grin and eyebrow wiggle, and without noticing Eddie memorised it and took it into himself completely. So he types it into Google Maps and finds out it’s two blocks away and wants to punch the air again. Then it starts to rain. God forbid he get too lucky.

He runs through sheets of sleet to the outside of Richie’s complex, which is of coursed guarded by security (jeez, he cannot wait to tease the other guy about this). Things have gotten to such a level that poor little Eddie Kapsbrak, who’d forgotten that he could ever do something stupidly brave for a friend, climbs up the locked fire exit and vaults stupidly onto a balcony. Through the window he can see a dark curly head thrown over the back of the sofa, glass bottle on the table, one light straining to illuminate the dark.

Eddie really isn’t sure what to do. He hadn’t really planned up till this point. It was all kind of a throw yourself around and see what you come up against kind of action. He thinks he probably needs to eat and get out of the rain. But what do you say to someone who’s thought, rightly, that you’ve been dead? Someone that you may or may not be in love with, and that’s a whole other ballgame Eddie doesn’t know how to face. He feels a bit dizzy. Squaring his shoulders, Eddie prepares to knock on the window, fear clenching his gut.

But Richie solves the problem first by stepping outside.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last one, kids. it's been a pleasure.

There is a long, stretched out silence. It’s still tipping down. The two men stand there, drinking each other in. Richie looks like he doesn’t know what to say.

It’s Eddie. Or it’s something that looks like Eddie. But it seems real. The person standing across from him looks like Eddie, shivers like Eddie, stares at Richie with a baleful yet ironic expression exactly like Eddie would. Richie just sort of stands there, mouth agape, before his eyes suddenly drop down to the massive raggedy hole in the middle of the other man’s chest.

‘Shit!’ he shouts, nearly dropping his glass.

‘What, what?’ Eddie says, sounding just as panicked as he would in real life.

‘Shit- your chest, man!’ He flails his arm wildly in it’s direction, and Eddie looks down, puzzled.

‘There’s nothing there, dumbass’

‘There fucking is. There’s a hole in your goddamn chest!’ Richie steps forward to look at it, then hesitates. This is what the thing wants him to do, right? Maybe it’s his subconscious trying to tell him about the hole (ha) Eddie’s left in his life. Maybe it’s It, still trying to kill him.

‘There isn’t, Rich.’ Eddie rolls his eyes. ‘Look, can we talk about this inside?’

‘Aha, you want me to let you inside, don’t you?’ Richie says hysterically, backing away so his back hits the glass sliding door. ‘Yeah, then you’re gonna grow four sets of teeth! Well, fuck you, I’m done with that bullshit!’ And Richie leaps behind the door and seals it, closing his eyes against the inevitable onslaught.

Nothing.

Just someone shouting his name, muffled through the glass.

‘Richie! Richie! Come on, man. Please. I’m not going to-‘ it huffs, and when Richie opens his eyes there’s a hand placed loosely against the glass, two dark wet eyes staring up from behind it. ‘I’m not a fucking Pomerian, alright? Let me in.’

Richie stares. Eddie stares back.

Richie’s eyes drop down to Eddie’s chest again. There really isn’t a hole: just a large, bloody gap in the raggedy fabric of his shirt. Richie got splattered with that blood. Slowly, he sinks down the side of the glass, still clutching the tumbler in his hand.

‘If you’re real,’ he says, just loud enough to carry, eyes shut, ‘open the door and come in.’

‘What- Jesus Christ,’ it sighs, and Richie wants to cry because that sounds just like Eddie, true to life. Richie’s not sure he can cope if it’s not Eddie. He’s not sure if he can cope if it is.

The door slowly snicks apart behind him. Four soft, wet footsteps, and then someone is placing hands on his shoulders. Real, living, warm human hands.

‘Rich. Rich, open your eyes,’ Richie shakes his head.

‘I don’t want this not to be real. I don’t want-‘

‘It’s real, man. Please.’ His voice is so exhausted, so genuine, that Richie can’t help opening his eyes. Eddie suddenly breaks into the most disparaging and fond smile, shaking his head, and it’s him.

There’s no way it can’t be.

Richie pitches forwards and bursts into tears.

-

Eddie doesn’t know what to do. He’s never seen Richie like this before- admittedly he’s kind of shaky on what he has seen Richie do before with the whole memory loss thing, but this shaking apart thing is new. He’s full on sobbing, pressing his face into Eddie’s shoulder, and all Eddie can do is hold him close and tight and real, a grounding presence.

‘I thought you were dead, Eds, I thought, fuck-‘

‘Don’t call me Eds,’ Eddie says automatically, and Richie kisses him.

It’s a salty, slightly misaimed kiss, landing halfway off his mouth, but it’s desperate and tender and over very quickly. Richie sits back as if he’s just received an electric shock.

‘Crap, I didn’t mean- sorry.’ He wipes the back of his mouth. The two men sit knee to knee, staring at each other, as the rain drips down outside.

Eddie’s kind of in shock to.

‘You- Richie. Do you-‘

‘Do I what, Eds?’

Eddie takes a deep breath.

‘Do you want to do that again?’

Richie frowns, then smiles, then frowns again.

‘What?’

‘Do you want to kiss me again?’ Eddie asks nervously. Come on, he’s only gotten this far with like two people before, both of whom were women, and neither of whom were his childhood best friend.

‘What?’

‘Is that all you can say? For fuck’s sake-‘ Eddie’s just going to have to do it himself.

He leans forward, grips Richie’s face in his hands, and kisses him. The other man is still at first, ironically, and then starts to kiss back. Eddie smiles. It lasts longer than he’s expecting, before Richie pulls back again.

‘And this is definitely real right? This isn’t like, a drunk pity dream c/o the ol’ subconscious boy?’

Eddie rolls his eyes, suddenly aware of how cold everything is.

‘Can I take a shower?’ Richie looks taken aback.

‘Um, yeah?’

‘Okay’ Eddie walks in the direction of what he assumes is the bedroom. Pauses.

‘Dyou want something to change into- what the fuck, Richie, of course he does, dumbnut-‘

‘Rich.’

Trashmouth pauses his sudden scrambling up the wall. Raises an eyebrow at Eddie.

‘You know how I was dead, right?’ Richie winces. ‘I think I came back. For you. You remember what I told you in the sewer?’

‘What, that you fucked my mom?’

‘No. the other thing. At the end. Before you went to get the others.’

Richie’s eyes grow wide. ‘Oh. Yeah.’ Eddie smiles.

‘Yeah. So do you, uh, want to, um, come with me. into the shower?’

Richie smiles widely.

‘Eddie Kapsbrak, you kinky fucker.’ Eddie rolls his eyes.

‘Just- don’t go to far away, yeah?’

Richie’s eyes go soft.

‘Yeah.’

Then Eddie turns on his heel and walks away, knowing Richie is right behind him.


End file.
